Ellie tugged at her suit. It felt tight around her body, suffocating her in the heat of the meeting room. Her thick hair was pulled back into an unusually neat bun, but the humidity tugged at the curls at the nape of her neck, helping them escape.
A shining photograph of the newly minted President Obama presided over them, his wide assured grin reminding her to whom she owed her allegiance. As though she would ever forget.
The door opened and Solomon entered, alone.
‘Don’t get up,’ he said as she tried to rise.
He took a seat opposite and placed an Embassy notepad, his phone and a pen in a neat pile next to him. He threaded his fingers together and rested them on the polished surface of the conference table.
‘I read your report, Ellie. Thank you for your thoroughness and candour.’ His voice had its usual parched timbre, but he spoke slowly and clearly.
‘You’re welcome. It’s standard protocol,’ she replied.
‘Yes. Your work in Sri Lanka has always been vital to our understanding of the country and the region. It’s a complicated place.’
‘Is someone listening to us right now, Solomon?’ she asked.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Is someone listening? You’re freaking me out with the formal-speak, as though a transcript of this conversation is going to be submitted to a Senate Oversight Committee.’
‘It is, Ellie. The first hearing is at the end of next month, February twenty-third. The purpose of this meeting is to confirm your obligations to the United States of America and the Central Intelligence Agency, under the Espionage Act, Title Eighteen of the United States Code and the terms of your contract of employment.’ His phone vibrated but he ignored it. ‘Do you understand your obligations, in respect to secrecy, confidentiality and non-disclosure?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I understand my obligations to my country and my agency.’ She swallowed hard.
‘Good. It’s unfortunate, the whole Tenby incident. He was a good agent.’
‘He was a paedophile, sir.’ Take that to the Senate Oversight Committee, Solomon.
‘He was. We’re looking into it.’
‘He ordered the hit on Ameena Fernando,’ Ellie stated, for the record.
‘Yes, and now there is some justice for her. Redmond will manage the message Stateside, with her family.’
‘You’ll tell them she was murdered by a CIA agent because she was about to—’
‘That’s enough, Ellie,’ Solomon interrupted. ‘I said Redmond will manage the message. The ex-husband’s campaign has to end. The Sri Lankan government and our Embassy wanted justice for Ameena, and now she has it. What we tell the family or the world is not relevant. It’s just optics.’
‘Optics?’
‘Yes, optics. You’re scheduled to take the 15.45 out of Colombo tomorrow. My driver will take you to the airport. Say your goodbyes to Sri Lanka. For real, this time. Perhaps it would be a good idea to make it once and for all. Despite your family connections here, the place doesn’t seem to agree with you.’ He checked his phone.
‘Did you read the other report?’ she asked.
‘What other report?’ He didn’t look up from his phone.
‘The one that was in the chassis of my car yesterday, but not today.’ It would have been hard to find unless you knew exactly where to look. Bradfield had taught her well, but he had learned from the likes of Solomon.
‘I read it.’
‘And?’ she asked. The report set out Ameena Fernando’s entire investigation into the Chinese arms sale. It listed which weapons the Sri Lankan government had bought. There was only one purpose for those weapons. ‘There are three-hundred thousand people trapped in the north-east, Solomon. Women and children. You know what will happen to them.’
He looked at her without flinching. ‘No, I don’t.’
‘How will you manage the optics on that slaughter?’
‘That’s enough, Ellie. You’re emotional and overwrought.’
‘Bill, please.’ She stood up.
‘We’re done here. I’ll walk you to the door.’ He stood up and put his phone in his pocket. ‘Outside, now.’
They exited the Embassy and stood on the street, under the shade of a jacaranda tree. He lit a cigarette and offered her one, which she refused.
‘The battle for historical legitimacy has always been grounded in competing mythologies, Ellie. Ancient tales of who arrived first. However, the battle has always been won by who has the biggest guns. Who arrived first is immaterial. Who is there last is what matters. Who stays until the end. It’s the same the world over.’ He exhaled a thin shaft of smoke into the air. ‘What were you going to do with that report? Take it to the press? As long as the Sri Lankan government receives its foreign aid, it doesn’t care about the foreign press.’
And the government would always receive foreign aid from countries like the US and China, falling over themselves to hold on to a piece of Sri Lanka. She decided to take the cigarette Solomon had offered.
‘I could have sent it to the UN.’ She had done that quietly before.
‘Sure, so that they could issue another toothless Human Rights Council resolution. Those refugees are dead anyway. We might as well have a stake in this game.’
Ameena had left instructions with the print shop. They would post it out on the fourth of February. Ellie had failed but Ameena would not.
‘Keith Tenby was a fuck-up,’ Solomon continued. ‘This whole thing is a fuck-up. I’m retiring after I clean this shit up.’
‘Did you know about the hit on Ameena?’ she asked. He was too good at his job not to know. Tenby was a spy, but Bill Solomon was a much better one.
He looked at her closely, weighing up his options, his many versions of the truth. ‘I did. And I didn’t stop it because I wanted what Tenby wanted.’
‘Jesus, Bill. Ameena was a woman with children and people who loved her. Those people in the north—you would sacrifice all of them, for your “stake in this game”?’ She felt her throat closing. She pulled off her jacket and undid her strangling top button.
Solomon looked at the tip of his cigarette, burning through the tobacco. He threw it to the ground, unfinished. ‘I would do anything to protect the long-term interests of the United States.’
Solomon had cleaned up Keith Tenby. Tenby, her friend and traitor, would be given a star on the wall at Langley. His family in Boston would be told he died bravely, serving his country. Perhaps the Embassy would say it was a car accident. He didn’t deserve a star next to the fallen. Next to Sharkey and Bradfield.
She said nothing.
‘I am sworn to protect my country, Ellie. And so are you. Don’t forget it. Have a safe trip home.’
•
Barry Sharkey. Gajan Navaratnam. Shane Bradfield. Ameena Fernando. Shirani Dennis. Renu Dennis. Manisha Gulraj. Keith Tenby.
But not Arjuna Diwela. Thank God, not Arjuna Diwela. Ellie sat on his bed and pinched him until he woke up. He smiled at her, with his broken nose and burned skin. With his almond eyes and beautiful heart.
She laughed tearfully and put her head on his chest, careful to avoid the wound in his right arm. The bullet had perforated the muscle but missed the bone. A perfect shot. They both knew it. The man on the motorcycle had been instructed to kill Tenby, to stop Arjuna and to spare her.
Arjuna put his other arm around her and held her. He had read her original report to Redmond and the heavily redacted one that Redmond would submit to State. He understood the moral compromises of war.
Rights versus security.
Someone else’s rights sacrificed for their security.
‘You’ll be okay,’ he said. ‘We both will.’
‘Must be the drugs talking. I can’t believe they’re giving you top-shelf again.’ She relaxed into his body.
‘I’m worth it.’
‘You are. I have to go,’ she whispered. ‘15.45 to DC.’
‘You Tamils don’t say goodbye. You say poite vahngo. Go and come back. Go and come back, Ellie.’ He held her tightly until she stopped crying.
•
Ellie watched Sathyan enter the Hare Krishna cafe and walk towards her. She wished she was four years younger. She would tell him everything. She would leave the CIA. No, she would lie to the CIA. She would disobey them, get Gajan out and bring him back to Sathyan, alive and whole.
She would do everything differently.
She would be a different person then and a different person now.
He sat down in front of her. Hands on the table, so close to hers. ‘Did you find Ameena’s killer?’
She took a deep breath and allowed her training to take over. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She coughed to clear her throat. ‘We think she was uncovering an arms deal with the Chinese government.’
‘I knew that,’ he replied.
‘It was most likely ordered by Dilshan Perera’s office, but I can’t prove it.’
He exhaled. He wasn’t disappointed or angry or hurt. She wished he was. She was ready for that.
‘Ellie … you have been a daily presence in my life for four years, even though you were gone. I’ve hated you. I’ve blamed you. And still, I’ve loved you.’
She had felt him too. A presence in the absence. She had felt them all. ‘Sathyan—’
‘Please, let me speak.’ He lifted his hand, then let it fall to the table. ‘You owe me that.’
She nodded.
‘For so long, I felt you here with me,’ he continued. ‘The deep joy of being with you. The deeper bitterness of your betrayal. With Ameena, it was different. It was simple and it was honest. There were no lies. No false promises. Just her. What she said and did and wrote. And it’s all gone. Like Gajan.’
She realised now why he had called her and asked her to come here, to this place that used to be theirs.
He lifted his eyes. So like his brother’s.
‘How …?’ She couldn’t ask him how long he had known. She was too skilled to concede the truth. Too cowardly to admit it.
He shrugged. ‘I’m going up north. I’m going back home. There’s a group heading out next week, a local NGO. The international ones have left the war zone—government orders.’
She thought about those weapons. That geography. The refugees would be cornered in the east coast by March. They would be starving by April. They would be slaughtered by May.
She had seen it all before. ‘Please don’t go. Your home is lost.’
His home, still not hers. But still this hurt.
‘My home is my people,’ he said. ‘They need me.’ His eyes shone but didn’t waver.
‘Your people will die. We can’t help you. No one will help you.’ She stopped. His people would be shredded and mangled. Their remains would be pushed beneath the metal-studded hot sand of a remote strip of beach in the north-east.
‘You’ll maintain a “neutral distance” rather than make a “necessary intervention”,’ he said simply.
‘Your people will die,’ she repeated. She couldn’t say more.
‘Then I will die with them. Look around you.’ He motioned to the words on the walls of the cafe. They had come here so many times that she had stopped noticing; stopped reading the scripture. ‘Look,’ he pointed. It was a scene from the Mahabharatha, the Hindu epic. Lord Krishna stood on his mighty chariot. Arjuna, the warrior prince, sat at his feet, his hands folded in prayer. Two sides of the same family were assembled on opposite sides of the battlefield, their armies poised. She had read the Mahabharatha. She knew how it ended. They would kill each other. They would kill each other’s children.
God said to Man: Why do you worry without cause? Whom do you fear without reason? Who can you kill? The soul is neither born, nor does it die.
God didn’t know Man the way she did.
‘Goodbye, Ellie.’ He picked up her hands, kissed them and left. She ran after him and called out his name. He turned and she held him one last time. She didn’t want to add his name to the list of her dead. Not yet.
‘I’m so sorry. Enne manichi kolungo,’ she whispered. Finally. Forgive me, please.
He said nothing.
‘Poite vahngo, Sathyan.’ Go and come back, she said.
‘Nahn poite varen.’ I’ll go and come back, he lied.
•
The man on the motorcycle watched the four white vans pull up in front of Alston Copy. He joined the drivers silently. There was nothing to say, just work to be done. The owner of the photocopying store had given him the keys and the location of the journalist’s boxes. Not easily. He had shown admirable resistance.
The men loaded the boxes quickly and took them to CID. There was a kiln in the basement of the building. It was purpose-built. Wide enough to fit a body. Wide enough to fit a box of reports, and nineteen more.
•
Ellie took the newspaper from the air hostess. The headlines were not about Ameena Fernando’s third article. She realised now that they never would be.
She needed to go home. She would tell Redmond that she was ready to work again. He was right to send her back. Asshole. She would buy her father some contraband KitKats. She might even accede to her brothers’ requests to go to temple for Tamil New Year in a few months.
The newspaper detailed the final stages of the war in the north-east and the Sri Lanka Army’s imminent victory. Somewhere further back, there was a short piece about the continuing investigation into Ameena Fernando’s death. Her face stared back at Ellie. An easy smile, intelligent eyes. The pixie haircut.
Three pages later, there was an article in the international section about an aid package from the US. It was titled, ‘New Road to the Deep North’. USAID had agreed to fund housing projects in the north after the war ended. They would donate German landmine detection technology and contribute to a clearing program.
US contractors had also won a lucrative reconstruction contract, building the highway that would penetrate the war-torn area and reconnect it to the rest of the country. Within the year, Colombo would be able to move goods, people and soldiers into a region defended for three decades by the Tigers and an impenetrable jungle.
The article did not specify the human rights protections that the Sri Lankan government had conceded to. They would not publicly agree to protect the rights they had never publicly admitted to violating. But the concessions were there, in the fine print of the aid package. Not nearly as many concessions as Ellie wanted, but more than she had hoped for.
The article also did not specify the military terms of the aid package. That was classified. But Redmond had told her that US naval ships and submarines would be allowed to dock at Hambantota Port when it was finally ready. And Sri Lanka would be given greater use of US eyes in the sky—satellites, monitoring the movement of soldiers, Tigers and refugees. Together, they would turn a blind eye to the slaughter.
All for the small price of a woman’s life and a superpower’s silence.
The price of patriotism.
Ellie tightened her seatbelt as the plane took off. She watched Colombo fall away from her grasp, the majestic palm trees and the sapphire blue of the Indian Ocean. She closed her eyes against the terrible beauty.
Sixty-eight Yuan. The price of betrayal.
In the warehouse at Hambantota, Kwan had said, ‘Sixty-eight Yuan. At today’s exchange rate, that’s less than thirty pieces of silver.’
Thirty pieces of silver. Judas.
She opened her eyes and pulled out a pen. In the margin of the newspaper, she did some maths.
At today’s exchange rate, sixty-eight Yuan was ten dollars. Tenner. Tenby. Betrayal.
She had to call Solomon.
•
Another Tardis sat quietly in the Frontal Lobe, exactly where Tenby had placed it months ago. A small black box, plugged into a computer, its activities unnoticed by everyone. It had been programmed by the Chinese to mine data from this server that was only penetrable from the inside. Fast and thorough, it reached into the US Embassy’s network and explored its dark universe of secrets.